| How to Remind Teens Not to Drink Dec 30th 2012, 17:00 Communication with teenagers can be challenging at times. All the same, there are occasions when it's essential to persevere through what seems like disinterest or rebelliousness to share an important message. Ensuring that your teenager fully understands the health risks of drinking alcohol is one such time where your gentle and well worded reminder can be a vital help. In giving them good reasons to reject peer pressure to drink, you help them to make sound decisions for themselves backed up by the facts and an awareness that you care. Your role is to know your children well, keep in close contact with them, and show them a safer future through awareness of the dangers of drinking. - Be aware of the challenge you face. Most societies treat drinking alcohol as a part of daily lifestyle and make it legal from a certain age (the age varying according to where you reside). Alcohol is brought out for celebrations, for entertainment, for drowning sorrows and for sheer enjoyment. Besides drinking for its own sake, it has other uses from culinary to medicinal. The role of alcohol permeates all of society, mainly thanks to advertising, which suggests that drinking is a happy activity to be shared with peers, without showing its negative impacts. On the other hand, it's not all in the favor of alcohol. More and more advertisements funded by government and non-government organizations are appearing that point out the hazards of alcohol, there are many excellent materials available through government and professional organization websites about alcohol issues and you have many parents as concerned as you on your side. Just stay open to the fact that you'll need to reason with your teen as to why alcohol gets such a good rap while its dark side tends to be downplayed.
- As a parent or guardian, be aware of the stages an alcohol abuser can go through. In a nutshell, there is an experimental stage, in which teens try alcohol with their friends. This can be followed by continuously using it, which may lead to early dependence. If they abuse alcohol, this can turn into full dependence, and finally full blown addiction. If you can discuss the stages with your teen, it can help you to relay how serious alcohol addiction is. Teens tend to just look at drinking as partying, but they should know the direction abusing alcohol can take. Once they understand this, and you are sure that they do, many times than not, they will still think they are invulnerable to such an ill fate. You can lead a horse to the water, but you can't make it drink, or you can lead a human to knowledge, but you can't make them think––and that's another challenge––but you must keep trying.
- Check your own example before trying to set one. What is your attitude toward alcohol? Are you drinking in moderation? Your teen notices everything and the message you're putting forward needs to be consistent.
- Find a suitable time to have a chat. Ensure that it's a time of day when nobody has to be anywhere and that you're all in the mood for spending time together. There is nothing less helpful than forcing your teenager to sit and listen to what may well end up sounding like a lecture when neither of you feels like talking! It is also best to not remind your teenager as a "one-off" thing but to discuss the topic regularly, including making off-the-cuff comments and asking for their ideas and questions about alcohol at any time. Your teen's understanding that you're willing to talk about it non-judgmentally and in a helpful way will increase the chances of more open discussions.
- Keep reminding your teen that you love him or her, and care for his or her safety and well-being.
- Below you will find a list of things you can tell your teen about the dangers of alcohol. It's not recommended that you read this list to your teen or treat it like some sort of mantra. Doing so risks your teen viewing you as being too paranoid or as resorting to scare tactics. Relaying a fact here, and a fact there, now and then, will be most effective.
- In a patient, non-harsh tone, express your reasons for not wanting your teen to drink at such an early time in his or her life. Communication expressed with love is essential for establishing good behavior of all kinds, and communicating how drinking can be detrimental to one's health, can help to prevent abuse of alcohol now, and help modify their drinking behavior in their later years.
- Educate your teen about the potential dangers and complications of teen drinking. Here are a few of them:
- Safety: Car accidents, and the risk of injury or death to another or oneself, and the legal repercussions of being caught while drinking and driving. Remind them before prom night or other teen events of the dangers of drinking and driving, as many teens are killed in car accidents when such events are held.
- Reproductive health: Impaired judgment causing unplanned teen pregnancy, fights, embarrassment in public, etc.
- Legal consequences: Discuss the legal consequences for underage drinking in general, including fines and jail time.
- Health in general: There are many reasons why alcohol consumption can be extremely unhealthy, for teens both now and for their future. Help your teen to understand why alcohol is unhealthy by discussing its chemistry (you can find help for that online, start with Wikipedia) and what it does to the human body when it is abused. It's particularly important that you clarify the dangers for younger folk; for example, the AMA (American Medical Association) has determined that the brain is in it's vital state of growth during teen years, and that the brain does not stop growing until the age of twenty five; tell them to consider this now, and before going to college, as it could affect not only their overall health, but their ability to concentrate and study as well. Indeed, alcohol use in teens has been known to cause irreversible brain damage. Other health issues include:
- Cirrhosis of the liver: Explain what it is and perhaps show them a picture of a healthy liver opposed to an unhealthy one. Explain that the liver can only handle so much alcohol at a given time, then after the liver is full, then the excess travels through the blood and to the brain, hence overworking the liver and destroying brain cells at the same time.
- Depression and anxiety: Explain how people fall into a vicious cycle of using alcohol to feel better when they feel down, only to have the alcohol become an ongoing cause of maintaining their sense of worthlessness and helplessness. Explain to them that alcohol is both a stimulant and a depressant, and the sensation one gets from it, or high, is later replaced by depression at times.
- Hypothermia: As soon as the weather is cold enough, there is a risk of dying in the cold when drunk. Teens have lost their lives from falling asleep in the snow on the way home or getting lost or breaking down in a car and either falling asleep or wandering off instead of calling for help and trying to keep warm.
- Alcohol poisoning: This is a serious and often underestimated consequence of abusing alcohol. With the social acceptance of alcohol as a social drink, it is rarely thought that over-indulging in alcohol could lead to death on a single occasion. Sadly, it can and it is important to make your teen aware of the facts. For more details, see How to recognize and treat alcohol poisoning. Another problem can be choking on vomit caused by alcohol and dying––a senseless and undignified way to die. And even if one survives alcohol poisoning, it still can lead to irreversible brain damage.
- Relationship damage: Remind them that many people have relationship problems due to drinking, as it can affect judgment and cause people to hurt others, even without intending to, because alcohol inhibits the normal restraint.
- A few sobering facts can increase attention as long as they're not overdone. For example, alcohol kills 75,000 Americans each year, and shortens the lives of these people by an average of 30 years. An estimate of 34,833 people died in 2001 of cirrhosis of the liver, cancer, and other diseases linked to drinking too much beer, wine and spirits. And alcohol is the third leading cause of death after tobacco use, poor eating and exercise habits.
- Spend time together looking at materials about alcohol abuse and the consequences. The internet is a great source of information that will help your teen to learn
- Sit with them and research such studies as Fetal Alcohol Syndrome showing them how alcohol travels through the mothers blood to the infants, thus creating brain damage, or in the worse case scenario, mental retardation.
- Search for famous people whose lives were damaged or destroyed by alcohol abuse. From lost careers to lost lives, there are many famous people who can provide a salutary example of the dangers of alcohol. It can help to choose famous people in fields of your teen's interest, such as sports, the arts, movies, science, etc. In some cases you might even have examples of colleagues, friends or family, but take care when discussing people you know well, as it might seem hurtful or dishonorable to that person's memory.
- Alternatively, if your teen seems squeamish and annoyed with you for hanging around too long, consider setting him or her a home project to research into the effects of alcohol abuse to inform you. Say that you want to know the effects of alcohol on the heart, the liver, the body in general and any other interesting effects of alcohol abuse and that your teen can present it one night in any format he or she likes. Give a fair deadline and try to inject a sense of interest into the project.
- Quietly does it too. You can obtain pamphlets, booklets and books about alcohol from various places such as Alcoholics Anonymous, university or medical research centers, your doctor, government sources, etc. and simply give them to your teenager or leave them about the house for general reading.
- Face the facts. If there is a history of alcohol abuse within the family, your teen has been exposed to its ugliness first hand. Whether it is a parent, an aunt or uncle, a grandparent or some other person, there is already an awareness of the bad that it does. There is a risk that your teen might have come to view alcohol as a crutch to fall back on when things go wrong, especially if there hasn't been a strong person around to teach resilience, healthy coping mechanisms and values to the teen. Honesty is the best policy––acknowledge the harm openly while reassuring your teen of his or her worth, noting that your teen is precious and deserves better. It might help to teach your teen ways to be assertive and self-accepting, if you feel that is lacking. If you don't feel capable of doing this alone, there is always help available to you through a doctor, counselor, a trusted friend or family member or a spiritual adviser.
- Spend some time talking about peer pressure in general. Often it is peer pressure that leads a teen to drink, even where he or she is well versed in the dangers of it. To this end (and for many other relevant reasons besides alcohol abuse), it is important to spend some time discussing ways of backing down from peer pressure by being assertive and simply saying "no". Your teen will probably be concerned about how he or she looks when saying no to peers, especially if your teen is worried about a lack of popularity, so spend time discussing how self worth comes from within and not from external validation (or removal of it). There are good resources online and in the library about helping teens with their self-esteem and to deal with peer pressure.
- You might like to start with a few wikiHow examples: How to help your child overcome peer pressure, How to help your teen resist negative peer pressure and How to deal with peer pressure.
- Try to remember how it felt when you were subjected to peer pressure as a teen. How did you react? How can your experience inform your teen now––being honest about how you felt and how you reacted can be reassuring for your teen, as it shows both a connection to your teen and understanding about what your teen is now going through.
- Help your teen learn as much as possible about recognizing negative thought patterns, and about dealing with his or her emotions and feelings rather than avoiding them or trying to cover them up. Alcoholics tend to be people who want to detach themselves from the pain of their emotions and feelings.
- Talk about marketing. Remind your teens from time to time, how advertisers make alcohol more appealing than it really is, all without showing the repercussions of what too much drinking can do. Alcohol does not determine whether or not you have decent inter-personal relationships or a good life. But it sure can interfere with these desired outcomes.
- Teach your teen to think about the issues involved in drinking alcohol and why people like to portray it as a social lubricant. Ask them to suggest other benign ways to feel better when socializing, such as improving your conversation skills or not caring what others think of them.
- Teach your teens to assess marketing claims critically. If your teen has this ability, it will be far harder to fool him or her into buying "the lifestyle" message alcohol advertisements try to sell.
- Turn discussions about alcohol into a social event. Keeping a friendly eye on things can go a long way to establishing trust and respect both ways with a teen and his or her friends. By choosing to overcome any sense of dislike or fear and having your teen's friends around to your place, you are taking an active role in supervising and influencing. You can also get to know the parents of your teen's friends where appropriate. Treating your teen's friends like extended family can help to both know what's going on and can prove useful for occasional reminders about alcohol. Pick a time to invite their friends over for pizza or the like, then mention some facts of drinking, like local car fatalities and take notice of who seems interested and those that may shun the topic. There is plenty of information on the dangers of drinking, but teens rarely pay attention to these, such as the nightly news or newspapers, so be informed, so you can inform them as well. Again, never overdo it––casual references dropped in here and there are good, while an occasional open discussion on "how do you feel about alcohol" might work, depending on the mood and closeness of everyone. Judge the mood and context carefully.
- Stay involved in your teen's life. A teen who is aware of the love, commitment and unconditional acceptance back at home, has a head start in life and will be be more likely to ask for your help. Notice when your teen is stressed, worried or disappointed and ask questions and be ready to talk. Be available when your teen needs you and you may just nip potentially difficult issues in the bud.
- Aim to give your teen a toolbox for life. The toolbox must be always full of useful alternatives your teen can reach for, like: a good friend they can rely on that is always reachable in times of need; a hobby that they can enjoy and occupy their time, and that will keep their mind off their troubles, and last but not least, any type of spirituality which has been show by several studies, including one at Columbia University, to be the most effective of all the tools.
- Most of all, treat your teen with compassion and love. This is a time of life when everything can be turned around under the guidance of someone willing and caring, a role tailor-made for you according to the values and beliefs of your own family.
- Warning signs that your teen may be drinking include: who they are associating with, depression, or general mannerisms. Common risk factors for underage drinking include:
- Transition from middle school to high school or getting a drivers license.
- Increased stress at home or school.
- Family problems, such as conflict, or parental alcohol or drug abuse.
- A history of behavior problems or mental health conditions.
- A new relationship with the opposite sex that may go bad, which can induce heavy dependence, then causing depression or apathy, then finally leading to one taking their own life. ( one of the leading causes of teen suicide today )
- Provide healthy alternative activities for teens so boredom doesn't become a factor in their decision to drink.
- AA meetings are held in many cities and towns in the U.S. and Canada, and can be found elsewhere throughout the world. Membership is free and they are a good source of information and alcohol-related literature. Even if you are not an alcoholic or problem drinker, attending a meeting with your teen could be helpful in teaching them about the effects of alcoholism. That said, AA isn't for everyone, so don't feel obliged if you find it doesn't reassure you.
Edit Warnings - Make punishment a last resort in the event you catch your teen drinking, as swift punishment may aggravate the situation, and be more detrimental in the long run.
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